Personal Statement
Dr Vanja Pekovic-Vaughan is a Senior Lecturer in Circadian & Musculoskeletal Physiology in the Department of Musculoskeletal and Ageing Sciences and a Science of Medicine Theme Lead in the School of Medicine, Institute of Lifecourse and Medical Sciences (ILCAMs) at the University of Liverpool (UoL). She is currently an Academic Lead for Research & Impact for the Department of Musculoskeletal & Ageing Sciences and also serves on the ILCAMs Research Strategy Group and Ethics Committees. She gained a BSc (Hon) in Human Genetics (Leeds University, UK) and a PhD in Molecular & Cellular Biology of Ageing (Durham University, UK). She undertook postdoctoral training in several of the UK’s leading laboratories (Universities of Newcastle, Durham, Manchester, KCL) before being awarded a prestigious Welcome Trust Tenure-Track Fellowship at UoL, investigating the role of cellular ageing and redox signalling in inherited human diseases and their temporal regulation by the cellular time-keeping mechanism, the circadian clock.

Dr Pekovic-Vaughan's laboratory is pursuing an interdisciplinary research spanning molecular biology, in vivo physiology, pharmacology and mathematical modelling to investigate the role of redox signalling and circadian rhythms in normal physiological processes from stem cell differentiation to cellular responses to stress as well as how their misalignment contributes to chronic age-related conditions (e.g. sarcopenia, lung fibrosis, chronic wounds, cardiac disease) and human inherited diseases (e.g. Collagen VI myopathies, Laminopathies, Peripheral neuropathies, Systemic Sclerosis, Marfan Syndrome and Fabry Disease). We are also actively studying the potential of utilizing chronotherapy in smarter drug repurposing (e.g. antiviral candidates in post-COVID, novel retinoic acid based candidates for neuromuscular ageing). The research programme is Dr Pekovic-Vaughan's group’s is funded through UKRI (MRC, BBSRC, EPSRC), Welcome Trust, RoseTrees Trust, Muscular Dystrophy (MD) UK, Dowager Eleanor Peel Trust, Age UK, Newton Fund, The Royal Society and CIMA.

Dr Pekovic-Vaughan serves as a UoL Network Coordinator on an ECMage (ExtraCellular Matrix Ageing) Operational Group, a BBSRC/MRC interdisciplinary UK Ageing national network (UKAnet) for Ageing across Life Course (https://www.ukanet.org.uk/ec-mage). She is an international collaborating partner on a REFRAME project investigating 'Redox and Metabolic Reprogramming of Cancer and associated Adipose Tissue' led by Prof Bato Korac (Uo Belgrade). Currently, she serves as a Managing Scientific Editor for Elsevier publishers (Redox Biology) and as a Review Editor for IUBMB publishers (BioFactors) and Elsevier (JCCS). She has recently joined the Biochemical Society Committee Research Area VI – Biological Systems. She is a UoL member of the MRC/Versus Arthritis Centre for Integrated Research into Musculoskeletal Ageing (CIMA), collaboration between researchers and clinicians at the UK Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle (https://www.cimauk.org).

We encourage prospective PhD students to get in touch about self-funded/funded PhD opportunities. We are also happy to hear from and provide support to Commonwealth and CSC (China Scholarship Council) PhD scholarship applicants as well as Marie Curie pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowship applicants.


Keywords: Circadian Rhythms, Chronotherapy/Drug Metabolism, Ageing/Senescence, Stem Cells/Tissue Regeneration, Redox Signalling/NRF2, Extracellular Matrix/Fibrosis/Wound healing, Chronic lung disease, Muscular dystrophy, Systemic Sclerosis

Research Overview
Dr Pekovic-Vaughan's laboratory is pursuing an interdisciplinary research programme at the interface between molecular medicine, circadian physiology and systems biology, and elucidating biological mechanisms from molecules and cells to whole organisms and system-level network modelling. We are investigating the feedback interactions between circadian rhythms, a timing mechanism present in all cells, and diverse cellular signalling pathways in the regulation of normal physiological processes ranging from stem cell differentiation to cellular responses to stress and transcriptional gene regulation.

Discovering basic molecular mechanisms is critical in building our understanding of how circadian redox misalignments contribute to many chronic age-related conditions we study in our group (e.g. sarcopenia, lung fibrosis, chronic wounds, cardiac disease) and human inherited diseases (e.g. Collagen VI myopathies, Laminopathies, Peripheral neuropathies, Systemic Sclerosis, Marfan Syndrome and Fabry Disease). We wish to uncover how ageing and various chronic conditions (e.g. shift work or disease) impact tissue repair and responses to injury/stress, and how these processes can be modulated by chrono-therapeutic approaches (both pharmacological or non-pharmacological such as diet and exercise) in order to improve tissue resilience and delay precocious tissue atrophy, scarring or degeneration.

We are actively investigating the translational potential of utilizing chronotherapy in smarter drug repurposing (e.g. antiviral candidates in post-COVID, novel retinoic acid based candidates for neuromuscular ageing).

We employ a wide range of state-of-the-art molecular, cellular, biochemical, bioinformatic and in vivo approaches, including advanced molecular biology tools, transgenic clock-reporter mice, real-time bioluminescence imaging, ‘omic’ profiling approaches (RNAseq, proteomics, metabolomics) and epigenetics (ATACseq, ChiPseq).

The research programme in Dr Pekovic-Vaughan's group’s is funded through UKRI (MRC, BBSRC, EPSRC), Welcome Trust, RoseTrees Trust, Muscular Dystrophy (MD) UK, Dowager Eleanor Peel Trust, Age UK, Newton Fund, The Royal Society and CIMA (MRC/Versus Arthritis).

For our research on Extracellular Matrix Ageing (ECMAge), funded by BBSRC/MRC interdisciplinary UK Ageing national network (UKAnet) for Ageing across Life Course, please follow the link
https://www.ukanet.org.uk/ec-mage

For our research on the role of circadian rhythms and chronotherapy in Collagen VI myopathies, please see the link on MD UK website
https://www.musculardystrophyuk.org/research/our-research/internal-body-clocks-circadian-clocks-in-the-pathology-of-congenital-muscular

For collaborative work with Prof Bato Korac (Uo Belgrade) investigating 'Redox and metabolic reprogramming in Cancer and associated Adipose Tissue', please follow the link below
https://reframe.edu.rs/index.php/about/

For collaborative work with Dr Leo Singer at UoL's Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology on circadian desynchronisation in chronic lung diseases, please follow the link below
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/sociology-social-policy-and-criminology/research/research-projects/dysrhythmia/